


uh oh spaghettios!

by ferocitas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Other, if your name isn't summon fish please don't read this, posting this on ao3 as a joke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28848927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferocitas/pseuds/ferocitas
Summary: skullcap has a bad time





	uh oh spaghettios!

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you write an au where you and your friends oc meet just for funsies and it gets out of hand.

The moon itself is a crumb among crumbs, hidden away in the far corner of a forgotten pantry. It’s nearly lifeless, save for an obscure species or two, certainly nothing carbon-based. It’s a void in the middle of an unwritten map. It's surrounded by nothing and no one. Not even the cheapest contractor would risk bringing anything to fruition on its surface. It’s a fool’s errand; a death sentence. The only thing a bounty hunter would expect to find here is a corpse.

And yet.

Skullcap maneuvers his ship around bits and pieces of space rock. He eyes unfamiliar asteroids and unnamed planets. He taps his steering mechanism in a crescendoing rhythm, his boot bouncing against the floor. His helmet glances sidelong at a tablet cradled within the passenger seat, eyeing a list of coordinates that stopped updating over three weeks ago. 

The average bounty tends to hide in one of two places: In plain sight--the success rate depending entirely on their ego--or somewhere abandoned, but not yet dead, civilization still twinkling from the horizon. The goal of the coward is to survive, of course, but it’s only instinct for a hunter to track its prey where it knows it can sustain itself. Simply put: A hare cannot expect where the wolf will strike because it does not know its nature, it will always be surprised; it would take something as clever as the wolf to know where it would not go.

Therefore, something--someone--very far from average indeed.

He’d been left with very little to go on; the only trace his target had left behind was the signal of a communicator that was only sparsely used. They’d found her subdermal tracker embedded in the skull of her enforcer, carved into the shell of a bullet. The rest of her trail had been smeared to hell with blood.

A chill plucks as the chords of Skullcap’s vertebrae and as he tears himself away from the coordinates, shaking his head. The dusty gray moon looms over the nose of his ship. He flips a switch, enters the last seen coordinate, and the ship’s engine shifts. He eases the ship onto the surface, circling a mountain range he likes. He nestles himself from view, landing far enough away from the point of interest that--ideally--his entrance into the atmosphere went unnoticed. 

The ship settles. Rocky debris tumbles around its foundation, the path of the wind is interrupted from its course, but soon all is quiet.

Skullcap hesitates. He takes a deep breath. 

“If I don’t come back,” he says, “The ship’s yours.”

There’s a rustling behind him. Pottery clangs together. From underneath a UV light emerges a pink, ringed head that cranes towards him. It snuffles something like a yawn, before it digs itself out from the plants it made its home surrounded by. It approaches him expectantly, tilting its head.

He rubs at his collar bone while simultaneously feeling for the weight in his holster. 

“Shame we didn’t get you your license.” 

The worm wags its tail and he leans over, rummaging through a compartment, before tossing it an egg shell. A hole at the bottom of its head snaps around it, cracking it in half. It’s engulfed within seconds.

Skullcap huffs a laugh. He finally stands, taking his time, wandering over to his weapons hatch. The worm slides through his calves. 

With his gun already on his hip, he plucks out a knife, and then a second one for good measure, sliding them safely within their respective pockets. His hand hovers over the handful of less lethal options within his arsenal before his fingers fold into his palm. He takes a step back, pausing only for a moment. 

In hindsight, he’s lucky there’s enough oxygen in the atmosphere to keep him breathing. He doesn’t consider it until the ship’s door is already open and he takes his first breath. The air’s thin; measuring his inhales becomes a conscious and calculated effort. Still, after he rides down the lift, he takes his first step onto the moon’s surface. The dust of his impact floats ever so slightly before falling back to the terrain. 

His line of sight is trained on every crevice and rock formation. When no ambush comes, he proceeds, only realizing too late his path is interrupted. He nearly trips, but stumbles into a recovery, gripping into one of the lift’s support bars to maintain balance. 

The worm is tense and completely still as it hovers over his shoes. There’s a rumbling deep within its flesh--one he’s never heard before--and while he tilts his head and squats down to soothe it, he runs his hand down the worm’s taut muscles and follows its arched head to the sky.

In the darkness above him, he’s blind to everything but stars. It’s an overwhelming blankness; like the sort that could swallow you whole. At first he thinks his companion’s been spooked by something in the air, or a sound his ears can’t pick up, but he persists, squinting up at the emptiness. The worm’s head swoops in a subtle sort of way, so he follows it’s direction, and it’s only when it jerks suddenly, snapping to a specific point, does Skullcap finally spot it.

A dark shape floats above him, obscuring the little light he has. It’s small, not a ship, it’s something within the atmosphere. He thinks it’s some sort of… drone, or maybe a weapon, but its shadow flickers suddenly, folds and expands, a sort of movement that can only be organic and breathing, and a hand erupts from his intestines and squeezes his guts when he puts two and two together.

It’s an oblong shape. It’s carried over him by two distinct wings, feathered and massive. A sharp, pointed head looks down upon him, moving before its body does, staring at him miles above him. 

It’s a bird. They’re being circled, preyed upon, by a bird.

He scratches the worm’s head and squeezes it against his chest, only to drop it back onto the lift. As it rises, it whimpers once, before the door closes behind it, silencing it. Skullcap keeps his eye on the lingering shape, carefully stepping around the more perilous and loose configurations across the range. He occasionally ducks out of sight, even attempting to crouch-walk in serpentine to lose its trail, but it never gives. At the slightest sensation of hope, a star will go out above him, and the hand inside him grips harder.

He navigates to a clearing in good time, tablet clasped in his hands. He crouches behind a rock and glances at the coordinates, then back up again, rooting around in a pocket for his binoculars. As he pinpoints her position, a light trail of smoke catches his eye, leading to the entrance of a cave. He checks in with the coordinates once again and nods, replacing his tools. 

Skullcap braces himself against the rock. He inhales, rubbing his gloved thumb against the side of his index finger. He pokes his head up behind him, towards the cave; there’s no sign of anyone or anything. If she has a ship, it isn’t here. They’re positioned in the lowest point of a valley--a glorified crater--surrounded only by shrubs and the peaks of mountains. It’s all flatlands: Nowhere for her to run, nowhere for him to hide.

He takes his time with his exhale, the air filtering through his helmet. He bends his knees, gets low. He unlatches his holster. His gun is a comfort in his hands.

He approaches slowly. His steps are as shallow as his breaths. Halfway there, his helmet turns upward, pausing for a moment to shift his focus completely. The stars shine interrupted and complete. 

He hums. His thumb runs across his knuckles. He presses forward.

The smoke wisps from the cave’s entrance, smudging ash onto its highest ridge. He can hear the lovebite of kindling against tinder bouncing off the caves walls, but nothing more, the silence of the valley pushing in. He idles near the entrance, waiting, not sure for what, his hand steadies himself against the structure with his gun at his hip.

His weight shifts. He tilts, bit by bit, until he silhouettes the darkness of the interior. He leads with his pistol, his finger ghosting over the trigger.

The source of the smoke is little but dancing embers and withered wood. It creates a short glow that barely reaches the cave’s inner workings. Still, he’s able to make out the outlines of shapes against the far wall. There’s a pile of baggage slumped in a corner, a chrome looking cooler with a frying pan propped against the side, and most significantly a sleeping bag, complete with a feathery crop of hair sticking out from the padding. 

He approaches her, steady, his gun trained on the head. His eyes adjust to the cover of the starless ceiling and behind her he makes out the outline of a rifle and he hesitates. He lingers near the entrance.

His shoulders square. His muscles tense. Then loosen. 

He clears his throat. “Kingfisher,” he says, “By order of the Court of the Glass Dunes and Lord Emperor Zusk, for the crime of mass homicide, put your hands in the air or be shot where you lie.”

His voice reverberates across the cave, snuffed out somewhere deeper within the cavern. The fire crackles a ways behind him, dwindling to dust. She is still. There is no stirrance nor sound. 

He clears his throat. He takes an involuntary step forward.

“There’s nowhere left for you to go. It ends here.”

Nothing.

He glances behind him, but snaps back, watching for movement. He shifts his weight back and forth, raising his piece a few inches.

The shot’s impact is worsened by the echo. He swallows a wince, his line of sight ricocheting from the newly created divot in the wall to the sleeping bag. When the dust settles, nothing changes. 

Skullcap turns toward the fire. Then back to the body. He aims again, for a lower extremity, and fires. Blood spurts outward, leaking from the dawny hole, and his shoulders leap, but even now, even with a hole in her leg, she doesn’t move.

He eyes the blood, leaning forward. It oozes rather than sprays; it makes a meandering path to the bottom of the sleeping bag, where it drips sparingly onto the dirt. He looks back at the firepit, at the collection of wood and smoke, and his arms fall by his waist. 

He sighs, his hand scratching his neck. He checks the tablet, then his surroundings. He lingers on the body a final time before making his exit.

With the stars above him again, he reholsters his gun. He checks over his shoulder before scanning the horizon for something, anything, even the slightest of exhaust fumes. He rubs his hands against the fabric of his pants, setting his jaw. 

“The body count grows,” he says, “And I’ve got shit-all to show for it.”

He rolls his shooting shoulder and pivots, directing himself towards the mountain range he came from. He keeps his helmet pointed upward and an eye out for any flapping wings. Ultimately, there are none.

Skullcap fidgets with the tablet. He swipes the coordinates’ screen downward, yet they remain the same. He pivots, walking backwards, as if by some miracle he'll spot treadmarks, or exhaust stains, or any sign of movement other than his own. His tracks sit alone, disturbed only by the flow of dust. When he turns again, his shoulders are relaxed. A cocktail of relief and disappointment alchemize in his chest. He fingers the latch of his holster almost involultarily, opening and shutting it, keeping his hands moving. 

He's squarely in the middle of the flatlands when he hears it. A sharpness, high and loud. A whistle. His spine's shocked squarely straight. His boots are weighed by lead. His helmet snaps upward, first towards the sky, and then to the mountain range in front of him.

His gun is pointed high on instinct. His eye trails the jagged cliffs ahead of him frantically, every muscle taut and ready. He doesn't breathe, doesn't move, he's all trained focus. 

A shadow flickers. He's on it immediately, but it's not quick enough, the seconds slip away from him like sand as he watches the figure, crept between two rocks, lean into the scope of a rifle. His shooting arm is still trying to adjust when the air between them cracks, broken by the whip of a bullet. 

In the milliseconds it takes for him to spin, to drop low, to force the feet beneath him to fucking *move*, he catches her waving at him.

He hears the tearing of cloth and meat before he sees it, feels it. He's toppling over as it hits him, white and hot like an explosion of metal undearneath the skin of his thigh. His gloves dig through the moon's surface, strained, the thrumping of his heart nearly audible through the veins of his neck. As he pulls himself forward, his elbows creating dirt tracks of their own, he realizes with a dawning horror his injured leg will not move.

His vision vignettes. His fingers loosen. The muscles of his lower body relax in a domino effect, he's not made even a foot of headway before both legs shut down completely. He slows his breath, as if that'll help, but he ends up sputtering.

With the last of his strength, he forces his hips to turn. He raises his shooting arm, the gun nearly weighing it down, and stretches his neck around to aim.

The cliffside is barren, without a single sign of disturbance. 

His muscles all come crashing down at once. His leg seeps. The gun is stuck locked in an embrace with his fingers. 

Skullcap blacks out.


End file.
